Created at a cost of $40 million, this experimental one-cell organism, which can reproduce, opens the way to the manipulation of life on a previously unattainable scale, several researchers and ethics experts said. Scientists have been altering DNA piecemeal for a generation, producing a menagerie of genetically engineered plants and animals. But the ability to craft an entire organism offers a new power over life, they said.

Wow! Man-made life, never thought I'd see it in my life.

Man-made genes actually, using borrowed naturally made life. It's more of an incremental step as we've been making artificial gene sequences for decades now.

It's funny. A few decades ago, when the Supreme Court decided life was a thing you could patent, it was all about a microbe genetically engineered to clean up oil spills. We sure could use that right about now, but it never happened. Instead the ruling became all about big businesses abusing patent law at our expense.

So forgive my skepticism when scientists tell me how this new advance will lead to practical advantages. I think it will only lead to another avenue for big business to profit at our expense.

Patents are only good for 20 years, Tudamorf.

You are free to that technology and make your own oil eating bacteria now, if you like.




I'm sure you will jump on it as fast as Michael Moore buying up parts of GM when they were for sale.

You're missing my point.

Which is that discoveries of this type are hailed as breakthroughs that will better society, but end up being used to exploit patent law to harm society. Look at the history of genetically modified plants.

Patents expire, but they can do a lot of damage before then, and then they're just tweaked to make a new patent.

You're missing my point.

Which is that discoveries of this type are hailed as breakthroughs that will better society, but end up being used to exploit patent law to harm society. Look at the history of genetically modified plants.

Patents expire, but they can do a lot of damage before then, and then they're just tweaked to make a new patent.

Already there is some opposition to the broad application of patents for this new research. And thankfully there is some rising awareness with judges that certain things should not be patented. At least one company that I know of recently lost a couple of patents (about genes involved with breast cancer). The judge (rightfully if you ask me) concluded that genes could not be patented and that the right of a company to make a profit did not include the right to keep medicines away from patients or the development thereof out of the hands of the scientific community.

I am holding out some hope that most of the patents in this case are going to be rejected (not to mention that some other countries are not automatically going to accept such patents. I am deliberately not looking at China here ...)
Of course the real problem is that patent law has been interpreted ridiculously broad in the past decades and has become the vehicle of choice of multinationals to protect there intellectual property, replacing common property rights and copyrights even where those should have been applied (the patent law is much broader, granted more easily and can tie up your competition is costly legal battles much longer).


Eri

And thankfully there is some rising awareness with judges that certain things should not be patented.You mean the few who aren't on the biotech company payroll, or appointed by those who are?

I remember reading a short story once about people designing their own creatures from do-it-yourself DNA kits. It was a fun story. Only creature I remember is the organic garbage disposer, a pig like creature that sat under your kitchen sink and ate table scraps.